A 32-year-old man, alleged member of a gang that burgled or robbed financial institutions across India by posing as vegetable transporters, has been arrested by the Delhi Police Crime Branch.
According to the police, underworld don Dawood Ibrahim had a fundamental influence on the life of the arrested man Intezar who liked to introduce himself as Dawood’s younger brother. He was also known as “Chota Don” among peers.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said Intezar looked up to Dawood since his childhood and always carried a photograph of the underworld don to motivate himself.
He said the gang had allegedly broken into a Syndicate Bank at Karnataka’s Haveri district during the end of January this year and made away with cash and gold worth over Rs.1 crore. They had managed to break the windows as well as the strong room of the bank with gas cutters and rods. Though the Karnataka Police came close to nabbing them, they managed to escape.
The police were requested to help in nabbing the gang after similar incidents surfaced from other South Indian towns. The police learnt of his presence here and arrested him from the inter-State bus terminal in Kashmere Gate on Friday.
It is alleged that Intezar and his accomplices had had even murdered a security guard while robbing a bank in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district in 2003. He was soon caught and briefly jailed. Upon his release, he hired unemployed young men from his village in U.P.’s Badaun district and targeted financial institutions located near vegetable and fruit wholesale markets.
